A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2020-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

“YOU AREN’T THE TRAITOR’S GRANDCHILD; that baby died in your grandmother’s womb, an unexpected victim of a night that had been coming from the beginning but should still never have happened.” The Luidaeg’s voice was low and earnest; the voice of a woman who was taking advantage of some sort of loophole in the world to say things she otherwise couldn’t. I kept my eyes closed, tensed against the transformation I knew was coming. “No human child could survive being exposed to that much transformation magic, and while your grandmother wasn’t the one changed, her lover the traitor was, and the baby was too close to the spells my mother was using in her own defense. I don’t think she meant to kill the bairn. She was never cruel to children. But she was fighting for her own life, and it was a mortal babe, and they were so common and died so often in those days, and so I don’t think she ever paused to ask herself what she was doing.”

She stepped closer, the fabric of her dress rustling against the sand, and cold fingertips caressed my cheek. “Your grandmother’s body never changed, save in the ways a mortal woman’s body is meant to change, and Mother took more than half of those away from her when she stopped the clock and bound her to immortality, but she was singed by the flames of her lover’s transformations. Her blood remembered. Your blood remembers. It is the weakness of your line, October Daye, daughter of Amandine the Liar. You will always be easy to change, because your blood still sings with my mother’s work, even at this distance, and it always will. Don’t be too angry. Every line has a weakness. At least yours is balanced by your strengths.”

She touched my cheek again, I knew she did, but it felt like she was reaching down this time, which made no sense. I couldn’t be getting smaller. I could still breathe. After the initial shock of the rising scent of the sea, I had gotten my breath back. If I was getting smaller, I wouldn’t be able to breathe, would I?

“Transformations last longer with the children of Amandine’s line, because your bodies yield to them so easily. It makes you a pleasure to change. I can show the full strength of my art. Or could—if you weren’t so easily upset.” She sounded almost amused.

I opened my eyes, and she was far, far above me, towering like a titan. But I could still breathe. The air hadn’t left me. I tried to protest, and all that came out of my throat was a guttural squeak that bore no real resemblance to speech. What the hell had she done to me?

I looked down at myself. I didn’t have to look far. My body was a tubular stretch of brown fur, ending in short, clawed hind legs. I was naked, except for, again, the fur, and spending time around Cait Sidhe has taught me that no one with a decent pelt is ever really naked.

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